Monthly Archives: September 2020

I screwed up the numbering on these Dispatches. And I have gone back and corrected a few so this is indeed Day 182.

Y'know, I did not like it when Richard Nixon tried to suggest that wearing an American flag pin symbolized support for Richard Nixon. I do not like the growing idea that not wearing a mask in public symbolizes support for Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Steve Benen notes how Trump is still trying to rewrite history and claim that he really won the popular vote in 2016. I have occasionally described certain folks, both in the blog and in stories, as being under the delusion that never admitting you're wrong is the same thing as always being right. A close companion to that is the person who thinks that never admitting a loss is the same thing as always winning.

Okay, that's yesterday's one Trump item and today's.

Several folks have written to ask me why, in his long career drawing comics for New York-based publishers, Bob Fujitani never worked for DC Comics. I never heard him address that question but it seems to me that the answer probably goes something like this: They never asked him and he was never without work for someone else so he never asked them. There were times when I think both DC and Marvel would have loved to have him but he was happy with what he was doing and who he was doing it for.

Several others have written to ask if I am in any way threatened by the wildfires raging outta control here on the west coast. I appreciate the concern but I live far from any area that could ever be threatened by that kind of thing. I do have friends though who can't say that and I am concerned for some of them.

Lastly: It's been announced that Jay Leno will soon host a revival of Groucho's old quiz show, You Bet Your Life. This has been tried before — once with Bill Cosby and once with Buddy Hackett — and both were quick collapses. Both times, it wasn't that the host wasn't good at engaging in humorous banter with the contestants. It was that the format just seemed dated and trivial. In an era where you can win a million bucks on a game show, I suspect it will seem even more dated and trivial. But we'll see…

You see that cover? That's from the eighth issue of Hangman, published by MLJ in the Fall of 1943. The cover and the story inside that went with it were drawn by one of the prolific, underappreciated artists in comics — Bob Fujitani, who passed away this past Sunday at the age of…well, almost all online sources give his date of birth at 1920 but not long ago, he told interviewer Jim Amash that he was born October 15, 1921 so that would make him a little over a month shy of 99.

He was employed as a comic book and strip artist constantly from 1940 until some time in his eighties when he retired…to paint. His first job was as an assistant to the great Will Eisner. His last jobs were mainly as a ghost artist from comic strips including Rip Kirby and a long stint on Flash Gordon. In between, he drew comic books. He did a few for Marvel, none for DC and quite a few for MLJ comics, Quality Comics, Holyoke, Lev Gleason and Western Publishing. For Western, he was the first artist on the well-remembered Dr. Solar comic. For Lev Gleason, he did hundreds of crime stories and many of their classic covers, some as paintings.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob a few times on panels.  He was an artist who loved to talk as much as draw, and he told grand tales of his childhood and how growing up as part-Japanese and part-Irish subjected him to a wide array of ethnic slurs.  He was also an enormous fan of all the artists he worked with or around, including Eisner and Nick Cardy.

"I learned to draw from everyone I ever knew," he said.  Fast, dependable, good and easy to get along with, he was never out of work until he chose to be…a career that is hard to chart but which lasted at least sixty-five years.  What an amazing achievement.

Today's one item about Trump is an article in The Atlantic by Peter Wehner headlined "Why Trump Supporters Can't Admit Who He Really Is." Wehner's answer is that they have become convinced that a Democratic regime will destroy everything they care about in the world. Excerpt…

This phenomenon has no shortage of explanations, but perhaps the most convincing is the terror the president's backers feel. Time and again, I've had conversations with Trump supporters who believe the president is all that stands between them and cultural revolution. Trump and his advisers know it, which is why the through line of the RNC was portraying Joe Biden as a Jacobin.

Republicans chose that theme despite the fact that during his almost 50 years in politics, Biden hasn't left any discernible ideological imprint on either the nation or his own party. Indeed, Biden is notable for his success over the course of his political career in forging alliances with many Republicans. I worked at the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the early 1990s when William Bennett was its director and George H. W. Bush was president. Biden was then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee; he and his staff were supportive of our work, and not in the least ideological. There will be no remaking of the calendar if Joe Biden becomes president.

I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary but you have to wonder what the prophecies of America's total destruction would be like now if the ticket was Sanders/Warren.

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The weekend we just lived through brought record temperatures to Southern California. Whenever it's really cold anywhere in this country, a guy I know tweets something like "Well, so much for the theory about Global Warming" as if record cold spells prove the climate is not changing. Somehow, he does not apply this "logic" when it's 121° in Woodland Hills and a third of the state is on fire.

For some reason — age, I guess — the touchscreen on my iPhone X has become super-sensitive. It's almost as if I blow on it and it immediately loads a random app, plays a random song or calls Sergio Aragonés. They're reportedly about to unveil a new model today or any day now and I can't help wondering if Apple has changed something about my current phone to make me more interested in upgrading.

A follower of this site and my webcasts wrote to say, "Your upcoming line-up is all comedy writers. I hope you're not abandoning comic books." Not at all. It's just the order in which I get around to people. I have a couple of cartoonists and comic book people lined up for October and November. I'm also, in response to many requests, going to give a few more folks a shot at interviewing me about different areas of what I laughingly call my career.

Readers of Groo keep writing to ask when we might see more issues of everyone's favorite lunkhead barbarian. There are completed, ready-to-print issues on a shelf somewhere but The Pandemic has thrown much of the marketplace into chaos so they await the proper time. I am told we will shortly be able to announce the proper time.

Similarly and lastly, The Pandemic (and certain tariffs imposed by that gent who already got his one mention today here) have made it rough to get books printed overseas and then imported to our shores. The seventh volume of The Complete Pogo got to the printer in plenty of time for an October release but we're now looking at mid-November. I hope, I hope, I hope.

Tuesday, September 8 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH CARL GOTTLIEB
Mark talks with a man who was at the center of the comedy revolution of the late sixties and early seventies. Carl Gottlieb was involved with the famed improv troupe, The Committee…he wrote for the controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS (and other shows)…and he was even an actor in the movie, M*A*S*H. Later, he wrote movies like Jaws and The Jerk and became an important presence in Hollywood labor relations. We'll try to get through most of this in ninety minutes.

Tuesday, September 15 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH DENNIS PALUMBO
Mark talks with the man who was his writing partner when they broke into television together. Dennis Palumbo went on to become a screenwriter (My Favorite Year) and a popular mystery novelist along with becoming a psychotherapist dealing mainly with the problems of success (or the lack thereof) in show business. So they've got a lot to talk about.

Tuesday, September 22 at 7 PM Pacific Time
A CONVERSATION WITH RON FRIEDMAN
Mark talks with his buddy Ron Friedman, one of the most prolific TV writers since the sixties with credits that include The Danny Kaye Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Good Guys, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, All in the Family, The Odd Couple, Happy Days, That's My Mama, Chico and the Man, Barney Miller, Wonder Woman, Starsky & Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, Fantasy Island and dozens more, plus for animation, he wrote G.I. Joe, The Transformers, Iron Man and dozens more of those as well.

I'm not sure I really understand John Oliver's "war" with the city of Danbury, Connecticut and I'm also not sure there's a rational reason. But if you've been following the matter, you're probably quite pleased that it looks like the town's sewage plant will indeed be renamed The John Oliver Memorial Sewage Plant as he wishes.

The mayor of Danbury has accepted his offer on the condition that Oliver shows up for the ribbon-cutting…and why on Earth would the star of Last Week Tonight on HBO not do that? Oliver knows the value of publicity and the need to "pay off" a joke.

Frankly, if I'd had any influence with the mayor, I'd have added one more condition: That Oliver stop taking so many Sundays off. He's currently off until the 27th and I'm going to really miss him.

This is the oldest photo I have of myself with Sergio Aragonés. I'm reasonably sure it was taken at the 1972 San Diego Comic-Con, which was called San Diego's West Coast Comic Convention and held at the El Cortez Hotel. I am not at all sure who took it and I have never been able to figure out why I have the negative to this photo among the strips of negatives I took at that convention. A logical assumption would be that whoever took it took it with my camera but in the photo, I'm holding my camera. There are some mysteries in this world that we can never solve and this is one of them.

I thought I'd repost it to give you some sense of how long I've known this man…and we weren't even new buddies then. Working backwards, I remember hanging out with Sergio at the July 4th 1970 Comic Art Convention in New York. A few days before, my pal Steve Sherman and I were wandering around Manhattan, just sightseeing and killing time before an appointment with Stan Lee. On the corner of 58th and Madison, we heard someone yelling "Mi amigos!" and across a very busy street, there was Sergio recognizing us! (I told this story in greater detail in my Conversation with Steve Sherman.)

So the point is that I knew him well enough for him to spot me in a crowd in late June of '70. We met when he was a guest speaker at my old comic book club in 1969. That's more than 51 years. During all that time, we have never had a serious argument…and the three or four unserious ones we've had have lasted an average of under two minutes each. Each ended with both of deciding the other guy was right.

Sergio is my Best Friend, at least in the Male Division…and I don't use the term "Best Friend" lightly. I know people who refer to every friend — even folks they see every three years — as their Best Friend. One guy I know has Best Friends he hasn't even met yet. Sergio is not that kind. He is a joy to know, a joy to work with, a joy to just be around.

In 2012 when I wrote a post like this with the same subject line to wish him a Happy Birthday, part of it went like this…

I've encountered one instance of someone who didn't like him…and the disliker almost admitted the reason that was obvious to all: Pure jealousy. He was envious of how popular Sergio was as both a creator of mirth-inducing sketches and as a human being who was fun to be around. That's about the only reason I can imagine for anyone to dislike my friend.

Since then, I've thought of one other person who didn't like Sergio and while the jealousy reason was probably part of it, his stated reason was this: Sergio does most of his inking with a fountain pen.

The fellow — I honestly do not recall his name — came to a few meetings in the seventies of C.A.P.S., the Comic Art Professional Society founded by Don Rico, Sergio and Yours Truly. We decided there oughta be a group where professionals in the fields of comics and cartooning could gather and discuss, among other topics, their craft.

Sergio began discussing how he'd found the perfect fountain pen with which to draw and how he had found a certain brand of permanent ink with which to fill it. Permanent ink would clog most pens but his worked great, especially since his was rarely not in motion and therefore didn't have time to sit idle and clog. The members of C.A.P.S. were fascinated by what Sergio had to say but this new gent was furious.

He took me aside and told me — and he even spoke in boldface for emphasis — that real cartoonists use pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink. He said this as if it was an immutable law found in the Ten Commandments somewhere between honoring thy father and thy mother, and not committing adultery. For emphasis, he repeated it a few times, also in boldface: pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink, pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink…

Sergio's work, he said, could not be real cartooning because it was not produced with pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink. He was angry that the art form he so loved was being polluted by people who did not understand that.

Sergio was not the main target of his ire. The main target was Garry Trudeau, whose Doonesbury was somehow being hailed as a real comic strip even though it was not done with pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink — or if it was, it didn't look like it was. To show me what a real comic strip looked like, the militant guy hauled out the original art to a newspaper strip he was shopping around.

He had about ten weeks of it — dailies and Sundays. They didn't look very well-drawn to me and the ones I read were supposed to be funny and weren't. But by God, there was no doubt they were drawn with pens and brushes dipped in a bottle of ink. He had no doubt whatsoever that syndicates would soon be fighting with chains and knives for the right to syndicate his work.

And of course, his strip never achieved syndication, I never saw the fellow again and you don't know who he is or was, either. Meanwhile, Sergio has every single award that is given in this world for cartooning. What can we learn from this?

Happy Birthday, my friend. May you live long enough to look back on this day and refer to it as when you were middle-aged.

Facebook allows you 5,000 "friends," though I've heard their software sometimes cuts you off around 4,975. For the last few years, I've hovered around 4,900 with something like 900 friend requests. Since I knew I'd never be able to add all of them, I figured I'd hold a hundred spots open for people I knew really well. Somehow, my total has crept up to 4,952 and that's with me unfriending a half-dozen folks who were posting that Joe Biden is an android paid-for by George Soros with the express purpose of blowing up Earth.

So my apologies to those of you who, for sheer numeric reasons, will never make it to my Friends list. Believe me: You're not missing anything.

One of my favorite performers, Stephanie J. Block, performs one of my favorite Sondheim songs…

I'm going to get it out of my system right now and not think about him for the rest of the day.

As we all know, an article in The Atlantic says that, according to multiple sources, "The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades."  Given some of his on-the-record quotes about John McCain and others who've served, it's pretty easy to believe that…but that doesn't mean the story in The Atlantic is true.

Trump insisted in a tweet that "I never called John a loser," and dismissed it — as he does all reporting that puts him in a bad light — as FAKE NEWS. And of course, everyone instantly located an earlier tweet in which he did exactly that. But that doesn't mean the story in The Atlantic is true.

Most of the pundits on Fox rushed to deny the story in The Atlantic even though Jennifer Griffin, the national security correspondent for Fox News Channel, said she'd confirmed some of it. But that doesn't mean the story in The Atlantic is true. It just makes it a little harder for those who want to disbelieve it to disbelieve it.

And that's what this comes down to for most people: Can I justify not believing it or at least telling myself, "We'll never know for sure so I won't hold it against him?"

Most of us choose to believe every bad thing, however thinly-sourced, about the candidates we hope will lose and we believe every good thing, however thinly-sourced, about the candidates we hope will win. Will the article be confirmed to the point where even Trump-lovers can't pretend it isn't?

One thing that might make that happen for some would be a confirmation from John Kelly, the retired four-star general and former White House chief of staff who was present when some of the incidents in the article occurred. He sure couldn't be dismissed as part of some liberal cabal. But according to The New York Times…

…Mr. Kelly, who served for more than 40 years in the Marines, has told associates that a retired four-star general should not come out against a sitting president in the heat of a political campaign, even though former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general, publicly criticized Mr. Trump in June for lacking "mature leadership" and trying to divide rather than unite the country.

"He wants to avoid taking a position that might be perceived as political," said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired four-star Marine Corps general and a close friend of Mr. Kelly, who had not spoken to him since the publication of the Atlantic article. "I also think he takes to heart the commitment to confidentiality in matters related to their interaction with the president."

I guess that's admirable in some ways but here's the problem with it: If Kelly knows the assertions in the article are untrue, it would not be political or in any way a breach of confidentiality to say so.

If some reporter lied and claimed that Trump confessed to twenty murders in a meeting where Kelly was present, Kelly would be doing a horrible disservice to the president he served (and to The Truth, which has to have some standing in all this) to say "No comment" or anything other than some form of "That story is not true." If there was any question of it being a breach, Trump would certainly release him from any pledge to stay silent so he could say that.

It also would not be a breach to say, if it were so which it almost certainly isn't, "I have no information about this matter because I was not present for the incidents cited in the article." What would be a breach that might be "perceived as political" is to come out and confirm the story. So his silence is making a lot of people think the piece is true.

And you also have to wonder: If Mr. Kelly thinks a retired four-star general should not come out against a sitting president in the heat of a political campaign, does he think it's okay for that retired four-star general to be an unidentified background source for an article in The Atlantic?

In my Conversation with Max Maven the other day, we discussed how folks who go to see magic performed fall into two categories: Some very much do not want to know how each trick is performed and some do.  The same thing probably applies with theme parks.  The one time I journeyed to Walt Disney World in Orlando, my companion was a lady who I think got a bit annoyed with my fascination with how everything worked…and I wasn't just focusing on what some might call magic.

I was intrigued by the way the mechanical stuff worked, by the crowd control, by the way they steered you to walk this way or that way…the way they lured you to pass certain vendors, etc.  The same disparity between my interest and my date's existed when I took a different lady to Disneyland.  She didn't like when I mentioned that the voice in the Haunted Mansion was Paul Frees.  She wanted to believe it was the Ghost Host speaking to us "live" from the dead.

If you side with those two women, you won't want to watch the video below.  A website that specializes in "tech" stuff took a look at that Haunted Mansion, especially the infamous "Stretching Room," of which there are two.  This kind of thing makes me appreciate the ingenuity and tech wizardry all the more but I can see where it might spoil things for some.  If you're among the some, don't click…

Today's one item about Trump: I am very confident that if the election were held today, Joe Biden would win with a wide margin. Which wouldn't mean D.J.T. wouldn't scream it was all rigged. About the safest prediction you can make for this election is that he'll do that. If he loses, he'll say it was rigged and that he really won. And if he wins, he'll say it was rigged and he really won by a massive landslide. Right now though, I trust this article over at Charlie Cook's Political Report that says that in the key battleground states, Trump seems to be stuck in the low-to-mid 40% range. I won't worry until I see that changing.

And hey, remember when the two worst things a Republican could say about a Democrat running for office was that (1) he was a Draft Dodger and/or (2) that "he hates the military"? Okay, that's more than one item but it's a development worth noting.

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Jeffrey Klein wrote to ask me what factors I will use in determining when to end my personal isolation here in the Fortress of Solitude. Well, the first and main one will be that my doctor will advise me it's okay. I have a real good doctor and while I don't have absolute faith in everything he says, I have way more faith in his assessment of a medical situation than in my own.

It looks like we may wind up with an array of vaccines and arguments as to which ones have been tested sufficiently and whether certain ones have been rushed to market too rapidly. Georgia may begin distributing one that California won't accept.

I'll wait and see what my physician says. I'll also wait and see what reasons, if any, I have for modifying my little isolation. (I am not always alone, by the way. I have carefully-selected friends visiting from time to time.)

Right this minute, I leave the house for walks, for doctor visits and for occasional shopping when deliveries won't do. Even after there's a vaccine around that my doctor says is good enough to inject into me, I bet he'll still suggest mask-wearing "just in case," especially since you won't be able to tell who's been vaccinated and who hasn't. Some folks probably won't get it no matter how safe and effective it seems to be because some folks feel that way about all vaccinations, even ones that have been around for years.

So I'll mask up and avoid strangers for a while. I also have an awful lot of hand sanitizer to use up.

Unlike a few friends of mine, I do not dearly miss dining inside a restaurant, nor do I miss traveling. I do miss being in the same room with certain friends but teleconferencing ain't that bad. I suspect that after The Pandemic is history, we'll still be doing way more of that than we ever imagined…and there will be more people working from home.

I doubt I'll be on an airplane for a long time. The next convention I might attend is WonderCon in Anaheim, which I drive to and which will not take place — assuming it does take place — until March 26-28 of next year. So I have plenty of time to decide about that and the operators of that event might even make the decision for me, sparing me having to think about it at all.

But right now, there's no place I want to go — no parties, no premieres, no live performances, no plays. The Magic Castle is closed and my reservation for the night before Halloween — which I made the day after Halloween last year — is probably no good. What I read about Las Vegas these days makes it sound like a place I don't want to be.

I'm thinking the folks who stage live performances have a vicious circle facing them. They don't want to put on plays (especially expensive ones) until they're confident audiences won't stay away for fear of being too close to strangers. But they won't know how many people feel that way until someone puts on some enticing shows.

I'm recalling when records were going away and I had to decide when to get a CD player. I'm also recalling when Beta was going away and I had to decide when to buy a VHS machine, when VHS was going away and I had to decide when to buy a LaserDisc player, when LaserDiscs were going away and I had to decide when to switch to DVDs, when DVDs started to give way to Blu-Ray…

In each case, I decided to make the leap once something came out on the new format that I really wanted and it wasn't available on the old format. I remember in the first switchover, they brought Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume 1 out on CD and it contained several tracks that hadn't been on the record album. That was when I knew I had to get a CD player. I expect to take that approach with COVID-19. I'll start attending live entertainment events when there's one that I just can't resist. Assuming my doctor doesn't advise against it.

There was no line to get into my local Costco yesterday and not much of one to check out even though I think they removed a few cashier stations so they could move the remaining ones farther apart. No free samples, of course…but they had plenty of hand sanitizer, masks, toilet paper and paper towels for sale. The last time I was there, which was in March, they didn't have the first two and they were rationing the last two. I didn't need any of those things then or yesterday but yesterday, they were totally out of two vital things on my shopping list.

So that was a disappointment and as I left, I thought there was another one: No funny anecdote to share here. But then outside as I paused to take a cell call, I began watching a man eat a Costco-sized slice of pizza with his mask on (see this tweet).  And as I ended the call but continued to watch the slice-eater, a lady stopped to ask where she could get a mask like mine.  I told her and she said, "You know, I don't like this whole mask thing but I suppose it's necessary."

I said, "Only if you care about silly little things like survival."  She chuckled and I added, "I don't think it's such a big deal to wear them."

She replied, "Oh, I don't mind wearing one.  I just don't like everyone else wearing them.  I like to recognize celebrities on the street and with everyone wearing masks, it's awfully hard.  Two days ago in Beverly Hills, I think I saw Martin Sheen but with the mask, you can't be sure."

Just then, someone walked by wearing not a mask but one of those transparent face shields.  She pointed to him and said, "See?  They oughta make celebrities wear those."  I thought that was silly but I also thought it might be easier to eat a slice of pizza with one of those on.

I wasn't going to post anything more about You-Know-Who today but our friend Shelly Goldstein has just released her newest video and it's a good one. Share it with someone who'll enjoy it or needs a reminder of what's at stake…

• This afternoon at a Costco, I saw a man eat an entire slice of their giant pizza without taking off his mask. He just squeezed it in behind the cloth, thereby doing something enormously healthy and enormously unhealthy at the same time.